I was cleaning out my parents’ house and and found my notebook from Miss Everly Driscoll’s World History class at Clear Creek High School. Inside the cover was a sheet entitled “Thought for the Day.”
On the first page, this quote struck me:
“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” — Bessie Anderson (1879- )
By this measure my Dad was a very successful man.
Miss Driscoll was a very influential teacher, who went on to become a Science Writer and was tragically killed at a young age. Her papers are archived at the University of Texas.
There was always a “Thought for the Day” on the blackboard when we entered class. I decide to transcribe them here for many reasons.
- to honor Miss Driscoll’s memory
- to reflect upon these words
- to allow my classmates to remember this part of our youth (and I have fond memories of her class, and especially how we were arranged in a horseshoe and could see each other as well as our teacher)
- to give myself permission to discard my old papers.
Here are the quotes from World History, Period 3A, in room F-2 at Clear Creek High School. I think this was 10th grade, which would have been 1968-69, but it could have been the grade before. There were also a few originals, attributed to ‘E.D.’
“…To unmask falsehood and bring Truth to light.” — Shakespeare
“It is preoccupation with possession, more than anything else, that prevents men from living freely and nobly.” — Bertrand Russell (1872-)
“The most beautiful thing we can express is the mysterious. It is the source of all true art and science.” — Albert Einstein (1875-1955)
“There never was a war that was not inward; I must fight till I have conquered in myself what causes war, but I would not believe it.” — Marianne Moore (1867-)
“He has achieved success who has lived well, laughed often, and loved much.” — Bessie Anderson (1879- )
“If a man destroy the eye of another man, they shall destroy his eye.”
“A restless woman in the house adds ache to pain.”
“Who has not supported wife or child, His nose has not born a leash.”
–Hammurabi 2100 B.C.“All religion, all life, all art, all expression come down to this: to the effort of the human soul to break through its barriers of loneliness and make some contact with another seeking soul, or with what all souls seek, which is (by any name) God.” — Donald Marquis (1878-1937)
“And there was a famine in the land (Israel, Canaan) and Abram went down into Egypt to sojourn there; …as…he was near Egypt…he said to Sara…say I pray thee, thou art my sister that it may be well with me for thy sake.” — Genesis 12:10-13
“God sells us all things at the price of labor.” — Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1518)
“If a man owe a debt and a dad (the storm god) inundate his field or if he has no grain in field, in that year he shall not make any return of grain to the creditor, he shall not pay interest for that year.” — Hammurabi (2700 B.C.)
“Who possesses much silver may be happy,
Who possesses much barley may be happy,
But who has nothing at all can sleep.”“You can have a lord, you can have a king; But the man to fear is the [tax collector].” — Hammurabi (2700 B.C.)
“Plunderers are everywhere…the Nile is in flood, yet noone ploweth…the Plague stalketh through the land and blood is everywhere. Men do not sail to Byblos today. What can we do to get cedars for our mummies? The pyramids are empty …” Toward the end of Old Kingdom Ipu Wer (2160 B.C.)
“And Jacob was left alone; and there wrestled a man with him until breaking of the day…Thy name shall be called no more Jacob, but Israel (prince).” — Genesis 32:24-25
“A wise man maketh a glad father, but a foolish son is the heaviness of his mother.” — Proverbs 10:1
“Wealth is the parent of luxury and indolence and poverty of meanness and viciousness and both of discontent.” — Ipid 422 B.C.
“Be on guard against subordinates…Trust not a brother, know not friend, and make not for thyself intimates.” — King Ammenemes ca. 2100 B.C.
“When good men die, their goodness not dot perish, but lives though they are gone. As for the bad, all that was bad dies and is buried with them.” — Euripides 484-406 B.C.
“Moderation, the noblest gift of heaven.” — Euripides 484-406 B.C.
“To the fool, he who speaks wisdom will sound foolish.”– Euripides 484-406 B.C.
“The company of a just and righteous man is better than wealth and a rich estate.”– Euripides 484-406 B.C.
“It is not strength, but art, obtains the prize,
And to be swift is less than to be wise.
‘Tis more by art than force of numbers” — Iliad Book XIII Line 383, Homer ca 850 B.C“Few sons are like their father, most are worse, few better than the father.” — Homer ca. 850 B.C.
“Urge him with truth to frame his fair replies;
And sure he will for Wisdom never lies.” — Homer ca. 850 B.C“Fools! They know not how much half exceeds the whole.”
“Oft hath even a whole city reaped the evil fruit of a bad man.” — Hesiod 720 B.C.“I grow old learning something new every day.” — Solon 559 B.C.
“No human thing is of serious importance.” — Plato 427-347 B.C.
“Everything that deceives may be said to enchant.” — Plato 427-347 B.C.
“The direction in which education starts a man will determine his future life.” — Plato 427-347 B.C.
“We do not say that a man who takes no interest in politics minds his own business. We say he has no business here at all.” — Pericles
“The greatest penalty of evil-doing — namely to grow into the likeness of bad men.” — Plato 427-347 B.C.
“Necessity, who is the mother of invention.” — Plato 427-347 B.C.
“If liberty and equality, as is thought by some, are chiefly to be found in democracy, they will be best attained when all persons alike share in the government to the utmost.” — Aristotle 384-322 B.C.
“Men do not care how nobly they live, but only how long, although it is within the reach of every man to live nobly, but within no man’s power to live long.” — Seneca 8 B.C.-A.D. 65
“The few carry the masses, and when they get tired, the masses have to wait…you’ll have a l o n g wait.” — E.D.
“Be ruled by time, the wisest counselor of all.” — Plutarch A.D. 46-120
“It is a true proverb, that if you live with a lame man you will learn to limp.” — Plutarch A.D. 46-120
“The very spring a root of honesty and virtue lie in the felicity of lighting on good education.” — Plutarch A.D. 46-120
“Live among men as if God beheld you, speak to God as if men were listening.”
“The universe is a change; our life is what our thoughts make it.” — Marcus Aurellius A.D. 121-180
“Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.” — St. Jerome A.D. 327-407
“Great Caesar fell.
O! what a fall was there my countrymen.
Then I and you, and all of us fell down,
Whilst bloody treason flourished over us.” — William Shakespeare, Julius CaesarWhy, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus; and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at sometimes are masters of their fates;
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.” — from Julius Caesar by Shakespeare“Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look. He thinks too much: such men are dangerous.” — J. Caesar
“Love conquers all.”
“Not acquainted with sorrow, I have learned t aid the unfortunate.” — Virgil“Avoid, as you would the plague, a clergyman who is also a man of business.”
“A fat stomach never breeds fine thoughts. It is no fault of Christianity if a hypocrite falls into sin.” — St. Jerome
“There is no greater pain than to recall a happy time in wretchedness.”
“For to lose time is most displeasing to him who knows most.” — Dante 1265-1321“What man has assurance enough to pretend to know thoroughly the riddle of a woman’s mind, and who could ever hope to fix her mutable nature.” — Cervantes
“We are therefore about to establish a school of the Lord’s service in which we hope to introduce …” — St. Benedict
“The voice of the people is the voice of God.” — Alcuin A.D. 735-804, Letter to Charlemagne
Three things are necessary for the salvation of man: to know what he ought to believe, to know what to desire, and to know what he ought to do.” — St. Thomas Aquinas 1225-1274
“The world (people) is not worthy of love, but love makes the world worthy.” — E.D. (Everly Driscoll) (1940-)
“Among other evils which being unarmed brings you, it causes you to be despised.” — Nicola Machievelli
“Heaven take my soul and England keep my bones.” — King John
“Life is as tedious as a twice told tale vexing the ear of a drowsy man.” — Ovid
“God is not willing to do everything, and thus take away our free will and that share of glory which belongs to us.” — Nicolo Machiavelli (1469-1527)
“To be honest as the world goes is be one man picked out of ten thousand.”
“There is nothing either good or bad but thinking makes it so.” — Shakespeare Hamlet“If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure and just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.” — Michelangelo
“If this be error, and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever lov’d.” — Shakespeare
“When my love swear that she is made of truth, I do believe her though I know she lies.”
“True happiness consists not in the multitude of friends, but in the worth and choice.” — Ben Jonson
“Just are the ways of God,
And justifiable to me
Unless there be (he) who think
not God at all.”“To live a life half dead, a living dead.” — Milton (1608-1674) Paradise Lost
“In everything one must consider the end.”
“He knows the universe but himself he does not know.” — Jeane de la Fontaine (1621-1695)“Who overcomes by force has overcome but half his foe.” — Milton (1608-1674)
“Tis education forms the common mind: just as the twig is bent the tree’s inclined.” — Alexander Pope (1688-1744)
“Man in sooth is a marvellous, vain, and unstable subject.”
“The thing of which I have most fear is fear.”
“He who would teach men to die would at the same time teach them to live.” — Montaigne (1533-1599)“The history of science is science itself; the history of the individual, the individual.”
“Who never ate his bread in sorrow,
Who never spent the darksome hours
Weeping and watching for the morrow —
He knows you not, ye heavenly powers.” — Goethe (1749-1832)“There’s not a man that lives who has not known his god-like hours.”
“The best portions of a good man’s life-His little, nameless, unremembered , acts of kindness and of love.” — Wordsworth (1770-1850)“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
“The right of conquest has no foundation other than the right of the strongest.” — Rousseau (1712-1778)
“To understand all makes us very indulgent.” — Madame de Stael (1766-1817)
“From the sublime to the ridiculous is but one step.” — Napoleon (1769-1821)
“Religion is the opium of the people.”
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
“Pauperism develops more rapidly than population and wealth.”
“The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” — Karl Marx (1818-1883)“Art is the product of the work of the hand, heart, & head.” — E.D.
“The more the marble wastes, the more the statue grows.” — Michelangelo (1474-1564)
“If it be true that any beautiful thing raises the pure & just desire of man from earth to God, the eternal fount of all, such I believe my love.” — Michelangelo (1474-1564)
“Then I began to think that it is very true which is commonly said, that one half of the world knoweth not how the other half liveth.” — Francois Labelois (1495-1553)
“No one is stupid — though your questions and actions may often be.” — E.D.
“Pains of love be sweeter far
Than all other pleasures are.”“I am as free as Nature first made man,
Ere the base laws of servitude began,
Then wild in roots the noble savage ran.” — John Dryden (1631-1700)“I am going to seek a great perhaps.”
“Let down the curtain: the farce is down.” — Rabelais (1495-1553)“To think that I attempted to force the reason and conscience of thousands of men into one small mould and I cannot make two clocks agree.” — Charles V (1500-1558) Emp of HRE
“Virtue debases itself in justifying itself.”
“It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn and innocent one.” — Voltaire“He is made one with Nature:
there is heard
His voice in all her music,
from the mona
Of thunder to song of
nights sweet bird.” — Shelley (1792-1822)